


Broken Wing

by rosncrntz



Category: The Man in the High Castle (TV)
Genre: Almost Fluff, Animal Death, Could Just be Creepy, Could be romantic, F/M, Great Depression, Kid John Smith, Obergruppana-ish, Tension, but not really, car journey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 15:09:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11785743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosncrntz/pseuds/rosncrntz
Summary: John Smith was twelve when he found a bird with a broken wing, and tried to save it. Obergruppenführer Smith finds a woman with a broken wing, and decides to save her. SET IN EPISODE 2x03.





	Broken Wing

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [TMITHC_prompts](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/TMITHC_prompts) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Similarities  
> John as a child finding a wounded animal and taking it home.  
> Years later, Obergruppenführer Smith bringing Juliana home after granting her asylum.

_You're very good in this role you play._

When the static hum of the car radio flicked to 'Deutschlandlied’, the woman in the passenger seat flinched. Like the wings of a bird, John Smith thought, before it dies. Strange: how when the body is anesthetised, those wings will still jerk and flick, as if hopeful of once again taking flight; and then the glaze in the eye will deaden, and the wings will still, finally. He had seen it happen.

The wireless blazed out 'Star Spangled Banner' for the third time that day, and the cymbals were beginning to sound like hisses. The sound spat with the bad reception and the cheap radio (more scrap than radio). His mother had once insisted they rise every time it passed over the airwaves, but after five great heaves to their feet from the battered armchairs, she told them they could just sit and listen. The idea of a National Anthem was romantic - and it seemed to be the only thing the radios would play that stifling hot summer of 1931. They would swelter in cotton shirts, their own sweat turning to clouds before their eyes. The metal roof of their hut trapped the broiling air, beamed it back down again, creating a sauna.

John was twelve, and smaller than his brother. He had been shut up in the hut all day, pink-cheeked and hungry. His mother used the last remnants of her thread to sew up a hole in Edmund’s shirt. There was a girl he liked and he was taking her to the park tonight: that’s what John understood of it. And that girl did turn up to the Hooverville – about seven o’clock or thereabouts – a blonde girl, about sixteen. She looked like a movie star. John had never seen a movie; but he knew that’s what a starlet looked like. Edmund was lucky, John thought, and so he needed a good shirt to impress her, and that’s why his mother used the last of her thread.

“He’s a handsome young man,” his mother had said. And, when John asked why he didn’t have girls to go out to the park with, his mother replied, “You will, John, but you’re still young.” She bit off the thread, and sewed in silence.

And, once done, she stood in her usual spot beside the door, looking out into the wasteland, blank and still and biting at her fingers. Her eyes seemed to hollow, and John was sure he could see tears. But he never asked her what was wrong, because he knew – if he did – she would say nothing. She only smiled when John came into her view: she would crouch down, tucking her hair behind her ears, and, grinning at him, she would say in a pretty drawl,

“Go on then, but be back before dark.”

And then John would be off, diving through gaps in huts and out into the city.

Juliana’s jacket had a hole in it. So small she surely hadn’t noticed it, but he could see it clear as anything. She would need new clothes. Better clothes. No sewing would do for the jacket, which was faded in colour and ill-fitting. He glanced occasionally from the road to the hole, then to her face. She would never return his gaze but, with a hand at her mouth – just as his mother’s had once been – she would trace the roadside. Mapping it. It might be so unfamiliar to her. Perhaps she was mapping her exits. Perhaps she was learning which side-roads she could dive into, away from the city.

His legs were always bruised at the knees from adventures like this. He would fall, scuff them, make them bleed. His mother would sigh, shake her head, and stare at the little dark spots of blood on his shorts when he took them off for bed. His father said he was too old to go running off and falling over like this. Scabby knees end when you turn eight, he said. But that didn’t stop him. There’d be scrap metal or tattered stockings that blew off clotheslines and it would grab and wind at his ankles, but he’d carry on. And then he’d come to the trees. He thought it was a forest. It wasn’t until he got to Cincinnati when he discovered what a real forest was. Aged twelve, this was good enough.

The trees dispersed the sunlight that fell on Juliana’s face.

The trees dispersed the sunlight that fell on his dirty knees.

It was the hot day, midsummer, when John escaped from the grog of the hut into the cool forest and heard a peculiar noise. A crying – but not human. And a soft, almost imperceptible, _thump, thump, thump_ , and the rustle of leaves following quickly after. John stopped to hear it. _Thump, thump, rustle, thump_. Then the crying – birdsong? But this was not a song. Or if it were, it was a morose tune. If his heart were capable of breaking, it would do so at this noise. But the day was too hot and his heart was too young.

Following the noise, he came across a bird with a broken wing.

It kicked its wings at the ground: _thump, thump, thump_. And the beak – so small and fine it could be filigree or a needlepoint – opened and closed, opened and closed, as if song wanted to burst forth. But the bird hadn’t the strength for song. _Thump, thump, thump_.

 _Thump, thump, thump_. His fingers rapped the steering wheel. How far was the house? Surely not too much further. He wondered whether she was afraid. If he breathed – if he breathed in long and hard enough – perhaps he could smell that fear. And what would it smell like? How would Juliana smell, afraid, alone? Could the smell of her fear drown out the perfume? The perfume that now he smelled, that was floral once but acidic now with her sweat. Was that sweat the smell of her fear? He wondered if she missed home, her nest, her little bird box. What people she had left behind? A man? A mother? He wondered if she would stare lifelessly, hollowly, from the doorframe, now that Juliana had fled. The people she left behind, would they even miss her, or notice she was gone? _Thump, thump, thump_. He drummed the steering wheel as he turned the corner. The house was not far now.

The hut was not far from here, he thought, looking down at the little bird. Surely, he could take it back, tape up its wings, feed it – no, he couldn’t feed it, they had no food to spare on birds – but he could nurse it. He crouched down. A strange fear seized him. He thought that the slightest movement might shatter the little thing’s bones. So small as it was. He didn’t want to move, to breathe, lest he should kill it.

Grubby fingers delved into the pockets of his shorts. He’d left his hankie at the hut. Sighing, looking around himself to the crowd of leaves, he rubbed the dirt from his hands on the dirt on his shorts, and took a finger to the closed wing, whilst the other thumped on. _Thump, thump, thump_. His fingertip brushed along the feathers, and the other wing stopped moving, and the beak stopped moving, and the eyes started moving, darting around for sight of peril. He began to shush. Like a mother soothing a child. He shushed the bird.

“I’m a friend. I’m a friend.”

Then he curled his fingers beneath the body. He was surprised at how light it was. He lifted it like a shoe. Less than a shoe, like a bread roll, like a sock. The bundle of feathers rolled into his palm, and he brought his other hand over, to shield it from the sun. He could feel twitching in between his fingers, but the bird didn’t make a sound. He stood up, looked at the crowding leaves again, like a guilty criminal. A hawk might come, and take the bird from him. A man might come, and laugh at him. He moved back through the forest, the way he came, careful to keep his hands steady and his grip gentle. Home was not far now.

There was a scuffle over corrugated iron. He usually scuffed his knees on the edge of it, and scrambled over the top. But, today, he had a passenger to be mindful of. The iron was burning to the touch, and so bright it seemed to make a second sun, but he carefully pulled himself over it, making red marks on the backs of his thighs and on one of his hands where he’d touched the hot metal. When he put his hand back over the bird, he noticed how the soft feathers tickled his now raw and sensitive skin. It was a harsh feeling, almost painful, but sublime.

He hoped the little bird was not too hot.

Should he roll a window down? It was hot in the car. He wasn’t imagining it. He hoped. He hoped his cheeks did not flush in the heat. He hoped his breath was not coming a little faster through his lungs. Would Juliana tell him, if she was too hot? They were almost there now, he supposed. But she didn’t know that. Would she suffer it? Would she suffer it, like a frog suffers boiling water, silent in the heat until it smothered her? Like a dog in a hot car.

Like his feet in their socks in their shoes, as he crept back into the hut. It was searing hot, now. And his mother was scrubbing the side down with an old sponge. And Edmund was fixing his hair in the hazy mirror, spitting on his palm, and running it through his hair, making it darker and darker with his saliva. And he was placing the bird gently on the table. It’s too hot here, he thought, the bird was better off in the forest. The crowding of the leaves and the dappling of the sunlight made it cool. The bird would stifle and die, here.

His mother turned around, and saw a creature, a little dying bundle of feather or fur, panting on the table,

“Good lord! John, what is that?”

He explained it was a bird. She had broken its wing. She needed help. Water. Care.

“What do you want me to do, John?”

He wanted to give the wing a crutch, tape a stick to it, wrap it in bandages. And then he wanted to teach her to fly again, give her food for strength.

“I can hardly afford to feed you!”

Forget the food. Just to keep her. To keep her safe and secure. To keep her from the hawks and the men. To make her a member of the family, and to give her a name, and treat her well.

“It’ll die, John.”

He remembered his vision turning to clouds. Full of tears, his throat ached and clogged with phlegm as he looked down at this bird. This bird he had carried home so carefully, with such optimism, with such power.

“It’s already dying,” Edmund said, walking over to the table, and looking at the bird – his bird – like it was just a piece of trash. Like an injured thing, incapable of feeling or thinking. Incapable of feeling beauty or touching the air. Incapable of the most awe-inspiring songs, and incapable of soaring flight. He wanted to seize the bird in his hands again, run away with it, run over scorching metal until he could run no further. “Put it outside, Johnny.”

“She’s not dying. Look. She wants to fly.” Its wings still thumped. _Thump. Thump. Thump_.

“It’s not going to be flying any time soon, John. Put him outside. It’s supposed to live outside,” his mother said, scooping the bird into her soft hands like she would scoop bread crusts or bottle tops, and handing her back to John, who was made to take the bird outside, and lay her down in the dirt.

He stood back up. Now so tall. Now so far away from the bird’s tiny little frame, still twitching, still writhing, still beating. Still wanting to take flight. Still looking up at the blue sky. Still tasting the clouds. Still thinking. Still hurting. He looked down at the bird when his mother called him back inside. He did as he was told.

He went back outside the next day. It was hotter than the day before. The bird had died.

Motionless. Still. Eyes open and wings still. Slumped. A pile of feathers gone cold.

Still, strangely, looking at him.

When the car pulled up, Juliana turned from the window and looked at him. Reassurance? No. Was she waiting for him to say something? Was she afraid, like the bird was? Was she broken, like the bird was? Was she capable of flight, as the bird was? Her eyes were the bird’s eyes. And he felt a pang of something profoundly and troublingly human tear through him. Unable to identify the feeling – guilt, fear, anger – he looked away. He was about to speak, but he didn’t.

The car was hot. The bird was dead. Juliana was alive. The radio was loud.

_The bird with the broken wing._

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this fulfils the prompt adequately, and I hope you enjoyed reading - all your feedback is always appreciated!


End file.
